THE STORY OF MY EXPERIMENTS WITH GRASS

The weather today, I think, was a result of the wrath of God over something. (How should I know what? I'm not God. Officially. ...Well, you didn't hear it from me, ok?) Like all good love affairs it started off hot. Damn hot. Hotter than the inside of a swimmer's swimsuit suit; which is to say a really hot inside of a swimmer's swimsuit suit. Then, as if weather was changeable or God was vengeful, it got cold. Damn cold. Colder than the inside of a swimmer's swimsuit suit. Then cloudy. Damn cloudy... Then the torrential rain started. Damn, there was a lot of rain. (I trust you are keeping the love affair analogy going for forgetful me). It was like that movie Hard Rain, with all the rain, or like when there's a load of rain and floods on the news, except not really so bad as either. I guess I should have drawn some comfort from the fact that God hates Hollywood and Bangladesh more than he/she/it (BLASPHEMER!) does me, but there was no time. For verily did the solid sheet of rain become solid rain; that which is known to the Hittites and the Canaanites and the Stalagmites and the Parasites as hail. Huge fuck-off chunks of ice fell from the sky so fast that I couldn't see them before they hit the ground and bounced up. Again, this could have been the act of a Loki God, inviting me to make the leap away from logic and common-sense that so many of those who surround me - my disciples if you will (they won't) - have made. Perhaps I was being invited to step away from my empirical cynicism, and instead believe that ice was trying to jump towards heaven.

All that God stuff is just summat I thunk up to offend a coupla yo' sensibilities here on this frosty August morn in Albuquerque. As the weather reverted back to the mundane, tired ennui of Temps Part Two (this time they're personnel), my thoughts turned to grass. After all that God could throw at it, still the grass kept growing, more luscious and verdant than ever. Could this be the answer to world hunger, or would that remain obese Americans with more rancid pig fat than sense? Hell, grass'll grow anywhere. Although usually found on lawns and in fields, how many of us have marvelled at a few blades of grass growing through the piss and concrete in the corner of a car park or some other apocalyptic expanse that society has lain down? All the things I am claiming grass to be, smelly hophead grasshopper hippies claim grass to be. 'Cept they can get high and make clothes with their grass, but woe betide any man who uses their grass to satiate his hunger. My grass will feed the world. Let them know it's May 9th.

Now I'm not advocating collecting up all our lawn clippings and sending them off to Africa. That'd be nothing more than the actions of a foo and an ijut. No n-n-n no n-n no no. Africa has been fucked-over enough. What we must do is collect up all our food and send it to people in Africa who have never experienced the pure joy of KFC so slick with grease that it must have been clitorized (romantic, huh?), or a semi-defrosted fajita with diseases beyond both my and my dictionary's lexicons. We, the over-privileged masses of the English speaking world, must gorge ourselves on grass. We must treat it as payback for the oppression done unto others by our forefathers (or four fathers for those of you with slutty parents). It is our duty to serve penance for this oppression whose benefits we benefit from beneficially every day. Anyway, it can't be any worse than garlic, soya milk or edam, can it?

A wise and boastful man has told of a holocaust to be preceded by the five plagues of heat, cold, cloud, rain and ice. I submit for your consideration that this won't be a nuclear one leaving cockroaches to be the dominant species; I think we are heading for an environmental holocaust with the only survivors being grasses and grazing animals: horses, cows and quasi-rebellious teens. (Nowadays, the true rebellion is conformity). If we are to maintain our rôle as dominant species on this planet, we must learn to adapt to eating grass. I am not suggesting evolving another three stomachs to challenge our vaccine friends (apparently it means cow-like as well as all that injection jazz); that is an unnecessary step at this early stage. I am just recommending the same awareness that led to nuclear bunkers and duck and cover in the '50s. We must feed the world using grass to save lives both now and in the apocalyptic future, we must be wary of the power that cows and horses have over us, and we must continue to crush cockroaches underfoot out of fear that our actions will raise them to kings, or elect them as presidents.

Addendum.